


Gods who inspire Art

by BreathingDreamsLikeAir



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Romance, Sad with a Happy Ending, Weird Plot Shit, Yearning, hyuck is mark's god, markhyuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:42:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26465098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BreathingDreamsLikeAir/pseuds/BreathingDreamsLikeAir
Summary: Mark Lee thought of life as before and after.This is his after.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Gods who inspire Art

No one had ever asked Mark that question before. Why were all his stories so sad?  
The answer was easy for Mark, it was just the thing that occupied his mind for most of the times.

But Mark had to explain himself.

It wasn’t that he was particularly unhappy, but more like he had lived once, he had been happy once and the rest of the world did not compare after.  
Mark viewed his life in two terms, an after and a before.

Before, he was hard-working, driven, patient, kind. He had a goal and he knew that in order to get there, he would have to work hard for it.

Then there was the after. He could document the after well.

In the first month since after, he has quit his job. He had changed his major. He stopped calling back home every day. When his phone did not ring at all on his birthday, except for the calls from his family, he had chucked it into the Han river. He was no longer worried about facing his so-called childhood friends. That had been the first month.

In the second, he had switched to online courses, only working in his studio, adding new music to his SoundCloud like a fiend, devoted to it. He had sold of his old car and bough a bike instead. He had died his hair pink from the natural black it had always been, choosing the colour from a dartboard. With the spare money from his car, he had bought himself a giant bookshelf and had been reading extensively. He had been frustrated, none of the music that he heard, not any of the words that he read seemed to justify his emotions, and so he created his own.  
He had sent a short story anonymously and he had been paid for it. He also got offers for his beats, and raps, and he sold the rights to some big company. There had been extensive paperwork, but he had skimmed through most of it. He didn’t need the money.

By the third month, his bank balance had tripled, and Mark actually sent a bouquet home. That was all they were going to get either way. He decided to get a lease to a rooftop house above a café in a quiet lane. There was ample of sun there, and he planted some plants.

By the sixth month, he had the café owner were almost best friends, and his roof was covered with giant sunflowers. Johnny, the barista had suggested trimming some of them, but Mark had been firmly said no. More of Mark’s songs were sold and he had been offered a book deal as well. He had rejected it.

By the seventh month, Mark had taken up painting, trying his best to recreate of what he remembered. Blood, swollen lips and the sun was all he could paint. Jonny had called it abstract and actually put on in the café. Someone had asked to buy one as well, and Mark let them have their pick.

The eight-month found Mark waking up with tears, screaming. He had fallen asleep on the terrace, next to the sunflowers that had grown wild. Johnny had to throw water at him to wake him up.

In the ninth month, Mark sat on the wall and saw the sunset, it looked so good, so inviting that he walked towards it. They had found him unconscious near the seaside. He had walked seven kilometres barefoot.

In the tenth month, Mark went to a graveyard. He went to all the graveyards in the city, looking at each stone, inquiring about each unmarked one. Mark asking about the unmarked stone. He found it funny. Johnny didn’t.

In the eleventh month, Johnny introduced him to Doyoung, a hacker who worked with the government. They went through multiple records, birth and death certificates. A list of almost every person in Korea younger than Mark. They didn’t find him.

In the twelfth month, Mark had given up, when he saw a hand, reaching up to the glass ceiling of the club he was DJing in. it was tanned, and Mark yearned for nothing more than to hold it. Mark had left the console on auto and looked around, running around several clubs in Gangnam. He could find it in the crowd of people, in a spare hand, or in the leather belt that hung from somebody’s waist.

He looked around and found nothing.

He had asked Doyoung for a favour again, going through the CCTVs, and Mark swore that the edge of the leather jacket, the turned neck in the bowler hat, the thighs that had denim treads wrapped around, it were all him, but Doyoung had shook his head, and patted him on the back.

It was an exact year, the anniversary of having his life destroyed, and heart broken, that he woke up, in the rooftop garden again. This time on a sleeping bag. His last memory was of watering his plants. He felt chilly, it was still the night, and somehow his shirt had disappeared. The sunflowers around him were all trimmed and groomed, and no longer wild.

He got up, hugging his sides, stretching his neck when he felt a sharp pain on a side. A pain he had known very well. A pain he had missed. He reached for his handphone, turning the camera on, looking at his neck. It was too dark and the front camera’s quality too shitty to make it out clearly, so he went to the washroom. He saw his neck, this time in the light, and the purple bruise on the right side.

He liked nibbling on it, sucking hard till it bruised, only to make lame puns about Marking a Mark. Mark felt a teardrop fall. The sink was old, and the single droplet made a noise. Mark went inside, straight to the kitchen. There, in the microwave was dinner, cooked well with side dishes even. The kitchen had been cleaned up and his bed made. Everything was organized, just how he liked it a year ago, before he had given up, yet Mark’s t-shirt was nowhere to be found. 

He suddenly ran down the stairs. Johnny had a CCTV installed near the bakery, surely, he would have seen. The lights in the bakery were low, the music off. Mark went inside and it was empty. He went towards the kitchen, knowing Johnny would be cleaning up, when he felt somebody call his name.

Someone who made his simple name sound like art, like a prayer and a plea. 

“Hey hyung, I know I stole your t-shirt, but you have a lot more.” The honeyed voice said, and Mark turned to him, hands reaching from their own accord, his face seeking the smooth juncture between his neck and shoulder. It was no less than the altar for his god.

He took a long sniff, the earthy sense oh him, just filling him up, and his lips naturally kissed a mole there as well. It felt so natural, as if it was what he was made for.

“hey, this is a PG-13 establishment. Please take yourselves upstairs.” He heard Johnny, but he shook his head no.

He then felt himself lifted, just slightly, carried outside the café, to where the stairs were.

“Hyung, I can’t carry you upstairs. Just come on” his god said, and Mark trailed behind, face still in his crook, lips still latched on his skin.

He felt him take both his hands and wrap them around his stomach, and as he led them up the stairs, Mark followed. Their rhythm the same. 

Mark found himself in the garden, in a comfortable chair he had very vague recollection of, his sun on his lap.

“hyung did you have a bad dream again?” the honeyed voice asked, and Mark looked up, savouring the boy in his arms, for that is what he was, a boy after all.

He felt another tear on his cheek and nodded, closing his eyes, when he felt soft lips suck his tear.

“what was it about?” he was asked gently, lips so close to his own, that he could feel their softness.

“it was a of a world without you, but only worse because you were in it, and then you left. I lived for a year without you.” Mark found himself saying, and the more that he said, the more he remembered. It was just a dream, a nightmare really, but not, definitely not the truth.

“I though you would be happy, because then I wouldn’t trouble you while you created your art” the boy had the audacity to think. Mark drew him closer, closer still when both of them were already tangled, and his tongue sucked in the oxygen around his ear.

“If it is not for you, then my life has no art Lee Donghyuck.”

“Its Donghyuck Lee, we changed my name after the marriage hyung.”

**Author's Note:**

> I get very vivid dreams after which I often get confused with reality, so yes///
> 
> Please leave comments and kudos!!  
> twt - @OmayaRocks


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